Google now owns a patent for data centers stuffed into shipping containers. You know, data centers like Sun's Project Blackbox.

The Mountain View outfit first filed for this "Modular Data Center" patent in December 2003, and today it was rubber stamped by the US Patent Office.

The patent describes a data center based on an "intermodel shipping container". That's a shipping container that's shipped by multiple carriers. "Rack or shelf mount computing systems," the patent explains, are "mounted within the container and configured to be shipped and operated within the container".